“And has there been any news of the Vicomte of late?”

It was Nick who asked the question, after a little.  Monsieur de St. Gre looked at him in surprise.

“Eh, mon Dieu, have you not heard?” he said.  “C’est vrai, you have been with David.  Did not the Vicomtesse mention it?  But why should she?  Monsieur le Vicomte died in Vienna.  He had lived too well.”

“The Vicomte is dead?” I said.

They both looked at me.  Indeed, I should not have recognized my own voice.  What my face betrayed, what my feelings were, I cannot say.  My heart beat no faster, there was no tumult in my brain, and yet—­my breath caught strangely.  Something grew within me which is beyond the measure of speech, and so it was meant to be.

“I did not know this myself until Helene returned to Les Iles,” Monsieur de St. Gre was saying to me.  “The letter came to her the day after you were taken ill.  It was from the Baron von Seckenbruck, at whose house the Vicomte died.  She took it very calmly, for Helene is not a woman to pretend.  How much better, after all, if she had married her Englishman for love!  And she is much troubled now because, as she declares, she is dependent upon my bounty.  That is my happiness, my consolation,” the good man added simply, “and her father, the Marquis, was kind to me when I was a young provincial and a stranger.  God rest his soul!”

We were drawing near to Les Iles.  The rains had come during my illness, and in the level evening light the forest of the shore was the tender green of spring.  At length we saw the white wooden steps in the levee at the landing, and near them were three figures waiting.  We glided nearer.  One was Madame de St. Gre, another was Antoinette,—­these I saw indeed.  The other was Helene, and it seemed to me that her eyes met mine across the waters and drew them.  Then we were at the landing.  I heard Madame de St. Gre’s voice, and Antoinette’s in welcome—­I listened for another.  I saw Nick running up the steps; in the impetuosity of his love he had seized Antoinette’s hand in his, and she was the color of a red rose.  Creole decorum forbade further advances.  Andre and another lifted me out, and they gathered around me,—­these kind people and devoted friends,—­Antoinette calling me, with exquisite shyness, by name; Madame de St. Gre giving me a grave but gentle welcome, and asking anxiously how I stood the journey.  Another took my hand, held it for the briefest space that has been marked out of time, and for that instant I looked into her eyes.  Life flowed back into me, and strength, and a joy not to be fathomed.  I could have walked; but they bore me through the well-remembered vista, and the white gallery at the end of it was like the sight of home.  The evening air was laden with the scent of the sweetest of all shrubs and flowers.

CHAPTER XIV

“To UNPATHED waters, undreamed shores”